Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

This debate on Cambodian government foreign interference in Australia comes a week or so after, sadly, another sham election—another fake election—in Cambodia by the Hun Sen regime. Last time, they won 125 seats out of 125 seats. I thought: 'What could they aim for? A hundred and twenty-six?' Well, they've manipulated the results a little and they've now given themselves 120 seats, so there'll be five—probably fake—opposition members. But let's be very clear at the outset: that election has no credibility—none at all. The former opposition leader, Kem Sokha, is still jailed. He was convicted, just before the campaign, on trumped-up charges. The previous opposition party, from the election before, the CNRP, have been run out of town and are still banned; they're international exiles and fugitives—many of them, in my electorate and my community. And the Candlelight Party, the only hope for any kind of civil space or democracy to be created, was banned on a technicality just before the election. At least it's a consistent playbook, isn't it! Then, only a few days ago, good old Hun Sen and his gangster regime—I think the world's longest-serving head of government; the Robert Mugabe of South-East Asia—announced that daddy's boy, Hun Manet, is going to be the new Prime Minister. What a democracy!

But, as far as this motion goes, it's anodyne—you couldn't disagree with the words; it's apple pie on foreign interference. It is an insidious threat. I know the member for McPherson is incredibly, profoundly genuine and serious about that aspect of it, and that the Cambodian Hun Sen's CPP goon show's infiltration of Australia—its interfering in and messing with the democratic rights of our citizens; its interfering in temples and community groups; its setting up of fake organisations—is unacceptable. I've said before—I did admit it in the House—I'm very fond of the member for McPherson. But, really, for a Liberal MP, a former Liberal minister, to bring this motion—when I first read it, I thought: 'Is this a joke? Is it April Fool's Day?' What word could we use to describe it? It's gaslighting the chamber. It's trolling the Notice Paper.

That the Liberal Party now, finally in opposition, pretend to care at all about foreign interference from the Cambodian CPP is the height of hypocrisy, and it's frankly galling for those of us in my community who've been speaking up, fighting and asking for attention for years—literally years. It wasn't the Labor Party; it was the former Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison who was famously photographed drinking champagne with dictator Hun Sen. It was the Liberal government that signed that disgraceful refugee deal paying that government tens of millions of dollars to house about three refugees. They did nothing for a decade. I wrote them letter after letter. Marise Payne occasionally wrote back.

Hong Lim, who you rightly mentioned, is an old friend of mine, and he and Hemara In were charged by the Hun Sen regime in the last term, when those opposite were in government, with trumped-up criminal charges for speaking out in Australia against the regime. It's an old tactic from the authoritarian playbook. They must go to conferences and give each other PowerPoints! I think DFAT said the last time they saw it was when Rwanda tried it. But there was nothing. I couldn't even get a letter back. The government did nothing. For them now to come in and pretend to care is galling.

The community angst, the death threats—I hate to say it, but they're not new. We've had them for years. It is the same nonsense. 'If you speak up in Australia against Hun Sen, we'll come and kill you or get your family.' The community angst, the fake groups—we called for visa bans, and the same goons, month after month, kept coming around in party uniforms, running fake community events, intimidating our diaspora. What I would say—and I'll choose my words carefully—is that I'm very pleased to see that there's a lot less of that now. It wasn't Labor members of parliament; I think it was Gladys Liu, when she roped Julie Bishop in, who was photographed with CPP stooges at Liberal Party fundraisers. There were countless letters to ministers and endless requests for briefings that went unanswered.

I get that this is hard. I get that Australia's power is limited. I sit on the intelligence and security committee. There are limits to what you can do. I get that you can't achieve everything in government that you'd like. I do get the fact that the extraterritoriality and jurisdictional questions are complex, particularly to combat the offensive tactic of 'We'll get your family in the home country if you speak up here.' But the previous government didn't even try on Cambodia. I just want to make that point. That's why I sound upset: because I am. I've been fighting this battle for years.

So I agree with the words, but I really wish that in the decade you were in government you'd done something there.

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